ABSTRACT
Analysing crime trends across cities is very difficult because the reliability and comparability of crime statistics is limited. A useful example of these difficulties is the recording and comparison of drug related crimes (per police recording), which reveals that in 2008 Mexico had 68.3 such crimes per 100,000 of the population, whereas Switzerland, in the same year had 619.0 (UNOCD, 2012). Here issues around crime classification, recording procedures, criminal justice systems, and policing practices all contribute to this final figure, making effective comparison futile. Indeed, the process of recording crime within countries is politically determined and allegations of strategic under-reporting are not uncommon. The UNOCD (United Nations Office on Crime and Drugs) provides some insight into urban comparison through listing particular crimes per most populous city, and these can be considered in relation to the Gini coefficients (as a measure of inequality) for those countries (see Table 5.9.1).
